Fox's new lead baseball crew of Joe Buck, Harold Reynolds and Tom Verducci believes the Red Sox have the talent to repeat as World Series champions, but none of them expect them to actually win it all again.

"On paper right now," Verducci said during a conference call this week, "I would give actually Tampa Bay a little bit of an edge in the American League East, as far as the division, but there's no question to me the Red Sox are fully capable of repeating.

"I just think it's so difficult now with the multi-layered playoff system not just to win one, but to win back to back. They have the talent to do it, but the odds are against them."

"Yeah, I think it's going to be very difficult to repeat," Reynolds said. "I think they had a lot of guys have career years. I think it all fell into place last year for them and it's going to be difficult to do it (again), especially getting through their division with the Yankees reloading. Tampa's going to be very good. Toronto's going to be better than most people think, and the Orioles are going to be there so it's going to be a different type of division to get through."

"I think repeating," Buck said, "in any sport in this day and age is next to impossible."

As Buck pointed out, no team has repeated as champion in baseball or football, the two sports he announces, since the Patriots won the 2005 Super Bowl. The last baseball team to repeat was the Yankees, who won three in a row from 1998-2000. The Sox haven't won back-to-back titles since 1915 and 1916. Not even 72-year-old Tim McCarver, who retired as Buck's sidekick after last year's World Series, was around then.

Verducci is impressed with the Red Sox' ability to dig deeper than their 25-man roster.

"I like the depth that they have," he said, "guys who won't make the team necessarily opening day but, as you saw with (Xander) Bogaerts last year, will make an impact."

But he wonders if closer Koji Uehara can be as effective as he was last season.

"It's hard to duplicate terrific bullpen seasons," Verducci said, "and I think Koji Uehara is going to find that out the way Fernando Rodney did."

Tampa Bay's Rodney was 2-2 with an 0.60 ERA and 48 saves in 50 chances in 2012, but slipped to 5-4 with a 3.38 ERA and 37 saves in 45 chances in 2013.

Reynolds is a big fan of Bogaerts.

"I think he might be Rookie of the Year," Reynolds said. "I'm kind of jumping out saying that. I think his talent's off the charts."

Buck wonders if 2013 World Series MVP David Ortiz can continue to play at a high level at age 38, but he rates John Farrell as the best manager in the American League.

"I think John Farrell," Buck said, "is as impressive a guy running a team as anybody that Tim (McCarver) and I met over the 18 years that we were together. We talked about that during the postseason all last year. He's a solid man, somebody capable of handling the stress that comes with managing in Boston.

"So are the players there? Obviously. Is the management there to do it? Yeah, but you just have to have a lot of things go right and the odds are against repeating."

Reynolds and Verducci worked together as studio analysts for the MLB Network. Verducci also worked as a field reporter for TBS and a game analyst for Fox last season. This will be Reynolds' first season as a game analyst, but Buck said he knew within five minutes of the trio's first tryout together last fall that Fox had found its new ?crew.

"Three-men booths," Buck said, "are not easy, but I think they work when the two (analysts) come at it from different perspectives."

Reynolds and Verducci should do that. Reynolds, 53, played second base in the majors for 12 years, then was a studio analyst for ESPN for a decade before he was fired in 2006 for what was reported to be sexual harassment. Reynolds sued the network and the case was settled in 2008.

Verducci, 47, will be the first non-former player to work a World Series as a game analyst for network television since Howard Cosell for ABC in the mid-1980s. Verducci said he will continue to write for Sports Illustrated and will always consider himself a writer first.

Buck, Reynolds and Verducci will announce games on both Fox Sports 1, which debuted last August, and Fox. The two networks will televise 52 regular-season games, twice as many as Fox did last season. The trio will debut with a Giants-Dodgers game on April 5 on Fox Sports 1.

Grande to call HC game

Celtics radio voice Sean Grande will provide the play-by-play of Holy Cross' game at American in a Patriot League semifinal at 5:30 p.m. Saturday on the CBS Sports Network. Chris Walker will serve as analyst.

Contact Bill Doyle at wdoyle@telegram.com.Follow him on Twitter @BillDoyle15.